An artist of the floating world

Autumn of 1948. The Japanese, in the fever of reconstruction after the devastation of World War II, are trying to leave the defeat behind, preferring to focus on the future. Not so before the war, a painter who spends his time caring for his garden and house, as well as his two daughters and grandchildren. However, his peace is overshadowed by memories of the past and he faces more and more disturbing questions about his youthful mortality. In the labyrinth of his memory, the decisive episodes of his artistic and human career, together with the consequences of his actions, are revealed. Kazuo Ishiguro’s early volume reveals the ever-straining compulsion of self-deception and the pursuit of truth. The Floating World Artist is the second novel by a Japanese writer of Japanese descent that won one of the most prestigious British literary awards, the Whitbread Award, after its 1986 publication. Ishiguro later gained world fame with his novel The Ruins of the Days, and his works translated into more than forty languages have won numerous literary awards, and in 2017 he won the Nobel Prize.